Help! It’s an unexpected idiot in the bagging area...

SOME businesses were never going to survive the internet. I pity the poor travel agents whose desktop computers alone used to be the gateways to our getaways. Not since the 1990s have I had cause to darken their doors.

It is rotten luck for record stores too. So unremittingly has their product been miniaturised and technologised that music now takes the form of invisible bundles of downloadable computer data denuded of charm.

We are poorer for the absence of these enchanted emporiums of yesteryear and if I had known where all this was leading, I would never have bought that CD player in 1985.

Then there are the businesses which make their own luck. In the face of the existential threat posed by Amazon et al, some have fought heroically to keep their heads above water and their employees in jobs.

Others have faced down commercial Armageddon with all the aggression of steerage passengers on the Titanic taking to their bunks and pulling blankets over their heads.

This year’s casualties include Toys R Us and electronics retailer Maplin; Mothercare and Claire’s Accessories are both in trouble. New figures say five shops a week went to the wall in Scotland last year.

Craving

Who goes next largely depends on how well they do in persuading us, their customers, to stay. Which is why I trouble you today with a tale from my most recent shopping expedition.

It was, to be accurate, not my gig. My partner had developed a craving for one of those internet music streaming speakers which renders entire record collections redundant at a stroke and it had propelled her headlong into a well-known electrical retailer with her debit card cocked and ready.

My non-speaking role left me free to gasp and rub my eyes and check again to be sure it was really happening. It was.

The first issue was that the product seemed impossible to locate. Strange, because it’s a huge seller. It turned out it was hiding behind the considerable girth of a staff member leaning against the shelf where it was displayed.

Yet, even as obvious interest was shown in the product by the two shoppers in his midst, he made no effort to unblock their view or engage the pair with snappy sales patter. This, it transpired, was because he had been stationed there to talk about a different product and was not, strictly, meant to be pushing this one.

But, since he was practically sitting on it, could he be persuaded to let slip a detail or two about the item which interested us? Well, he said, he would try. Still he did not budge.

Perhaps asking to hear the machine play would dislodge him. Nope. It merely brought a reminder that he was really a TV sound-bar salesman.

Dazedly, we wandered away in search of a shop assistant who did justice to the job title.

We found none but did chance on another of these speakers in a different part of the store and tried standing next to it and shouting and waving frantically, like shipwrecked survivors on a desert island. Staff members steamed past, heedless to our cries.

Finally I picked one at random, gave chase and, when I had him cornered, he promised to send an assistant over. Sure enough, five minutes later, a 12-year-old asked if he could help us. Actually, he probably only looked 12 – and we could not fault his knowledge of the product.

‘The thing about this one is the sound quality’s amazing,’ he said. ‘Really?’ ‘Yes, I’ve got one myself. If it’s sound quality you’re after, there’s nothing to touch it in this price bracket.’

This was more like it. ‘Let’s hear it, then.’

The youngster shook his head sorrowfully. ‘We can’t do that, I’m afraid.’

‘Why ever not?’

Quality

He looked blank. As well he might. In the battle for supremacy between high street and online, there are advantages the internet can never wrest away. With an audio product lauded for sound quality, no internet retailer can do what the conventional retailer can – let customers hear it.

Do retailers who blithely give up such an advantage really deserve to survive? It was because we were wondering that as we walked away empty handed that it is perhaps better not to name this one.

So we went to a competitor to see if it was any more interested in taking the lady’s money. We were served within seconds by a sales assistant who not only understood the product inside out but also knew how to convey this to technological illiterates.

‘And, er, can we hear how it sounds?’ ‘Certainly.’ ‘And now can we hear how it sounds in comparison with this other one?’ ‘No problem.’ Needless to say, it was here the money changed hands.

Research suggests high street chains may have pensioners to thank for keeping them alive. It’s not that over65s don’t know how to shop online, rather that they sense web-based retail kills jobs, possibly their grandchildren’s.

I’d fear for pensioners’ sanity in the first shop. And I fear for the promising young assistant. I’d jump ship, pal, while you can. Your one’s sinking.